


where is your pleasure, where is your rest

by Laliandra



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Domestic, Feelings Realization, LA Era (Crooked Media RPF), M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Remix, polyamorous pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 10:07:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20864456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laliandra/pseuds/Laliandra
Summary: “So I thought, who do I know who is in New England right now and who loves me enough to go boyfriend my boyfriend,” Lovett says, brittle bright like hard candy. “I know, I know, you’re doing family stuff but I looked it up and door to door it’s only like, three hours so you could do a daytrip, shake my idiot beloved for me, make it back in time for sundowners at the yacht club.”





	where is your pleasure, where is your rest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hopefor46](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopefor46/gifts).

> Remix of [If you think I'm losing you, you must be crazy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18443132) by hopefor46
> 
> I adored the quiet lovely intimacy of the original and wanted to do something in that ~mood
> 
> with love and thanks to everyone who was so very patient and great! title from the rhyme I always think is coming in Hadestown.

Home is... It’s home. It’s dinner with his mom and breakfast with his sister and trying to catch up on his emails in between those two events which makes it impossible to adjust to EST. It’s three days of trying not to regress into an asshole. It’s being “at home” when  _ home _ is the other side of the country. 

Tommy catches himself humming Don't Stop Believing because all of the texts that Lovett has sent about him being a small town girl, which Lovett does every time Tommy goes back to Dover. Still gets stuck in his head every time. He messages Lovett to yell at him about it. 

Lovett does not respond. 

Tommy does not worry about it. Not for the first few hours, anyway. Not as much as he’s worried about Lovett before, or he worries about other things, or as much as Lovett disappearing from the face of the earth for multiple hours could warrant. 

He’s still unable to hide the relief in his voice when he picks up a call from Lovett that evening. Lovett barrels into something about google map distances and the I-90 and doesn’t seem to notice, which is good, probably, because it avoids Lovett asking how he is and being home is also a sense memory of people asking him how he’s doing. The sympathetic head tilt. The voice. People ‘just checking in!’.

Which. “Lovett? Are you doing okay?” He waves at his mom through the open living room door on the way to his bedroom, then curls his hand over the phone again, an automatic gesture of privacy and protection borne of listening to his high school girlfriend on the phone in the hallway. This is just for him.

There is the sharp sound of an exhalation into a cellphone, rushing its way to Tommy, unblunted by the distance. Lovett says, “Yes. Yes, yeah,  _ yes _ . Ronan though... He’s okay, he’s alright, stand down Vietor, he’s not in physical danger from Mossad this time around. He just... So, you know he’s supposed to be on some vast extended Farrow retreat this weekend?” 

Tommy does know. He knows all about Mia Farrow’s end of summer vacation plans because that’s the life he lives now. He has heard Ronan explain what many activities there will be for the many children and which of the many dogs are going with and which are being kennelled, and he has offered advice on boat hire. He even lent Ronan a waterproof hat, which the Jons mocked them both about relentlessly for a good two weeks. 

“Yeah,” he says to Lovett, trying not to pull any focus at all from whatever actual crisis is happening at the other end of the line. This is a dangerous potential time for Lovett deflecting into a bit and never circling back. Tommy settles himself on the bed and waits out the silence.

Lovett sighs again, so small and tattered it’s hardly there. “He can’t go, he missed the flight because of a source, and it’s some tiny charter line so who even knows when he’d be able to get another one, so he gave up. Which is  _ not _ a Ronan thing to do. He said he was staying in New York, throwing himself into book stuff and wallowing, except it turns out that he’s driven out to the fucking farm to really truly wallow, like, just dive right into this pit of sadness and keep going down.” Lovett cuts himself off, makes a noise at himself that Tommy knows all too well. “That’s not fair, it fucking sucks, it does, and even if he dug some of this pit himself it’s not fair to... I’m mad because I have two shows to do out of town and I can’t cancel just because Ronan seems sad, but, I’m just... He won’t answer his cell and he’s all alone out there and, fuck, I’m really worried about him, I just want to see that he’s alright even when he’s forgetting to answer texts, and I’m so-” There’s another noise that Tommy knows too. He wishes that he didn’t know it. “I’m so far away right now, Tommy.” That noise is self recriminatory heartbreak, and Tommy can’t bear it. 

“Jon,” he says, doesn’t know how to go on from there but has to start. He feels far away too, far from being able to lean against Lovett’s side and make promises, or push his broken down car wherever Lovett needs them to go. 

“So I thought, who do I know who is in New England right now and who loves me enough to go boyfriend my boyfriend,” Lovett says, brittle bright like hard candy. “I know, I know, you’re doing family stuff but I looked it up and door to door it’s only like, three hours so you could do a daytrip, shake my idiot beloved for me, make it back in time for sundowners at the yacht club.”

“Oh, that’s why you were rambling about the I-90,” Tommy says. He can only process so much at once and he’s already discarded the initial reaction he had about the yacht club comment because, well, it isn’t inaccurate. "I have a dumb enormous rental so you're paying the gas, too, I got bills," he says.

"Tommy, don't you pretend to be a man of the people, you -" There is a pause and there is a noise and Lovett says, nakedly hopeful, "Wait, so, you’'ll go?" 

"I'll go," Tommy promises. "Should I message Ronan?" He gets up, starts to work out what he should pack, should he pack? He should pack. He should pack and try and explain this to his mom, although being weak to Jon Lovett seems to be genetic. She loves both of his Jons almost as much as he does. If he tells her that Lovett is sad, she’ll understand why he has to do anything in his power. 

Lovett says, "Nah he'll just try and talk you out of it," because he hasn't ever chosen ask permission over demand forgiveness. "Honestly I thought that I would have to talk you into it more. I had a whole raft, nay, a boat, an ocean liner of logical reasonings and emotional blackmails." 

Tommy knew that Lovett was worried but they're here, where Lovett forgets who they are to each other. This is bad. Maybe once he's done at the farm he'll just keep driving all the way to Long Island and hunt down everyone who left Jon Lovett just for being himself. 

“Lovett,” he says, letting it sound like a reproach rather than... whatever it is really. “C’mon.” He lets Lovett sit with that for a moment before adding. “You and Ronan have literally picked me up from the floor more than once, if a quid pro quo makes you feel better. I can drive out and make him eat a real item of food.” 

“I think it was just one time from the actual floor,” Lovett says, giving Tommy something back, a little slack, a little dignity, in the admission and the soft shadows of his voice. “And you don’t owe us for that one, you repressed loser.” And that’s the Lovett who has shaken Tommy loose for ten years with kindness and no corner. Who Tommy would do anything for. 

*

Tommy thinks about that one time for most of the freeway drive. His mom packed snacks so he doesn’t even have to stop, instead eating chips out of the cupholder and letting the state roll by and thinking about Lovett’s hand gentle on his forehead, Ronan’s hand steady on his shoulder. 

They were supposed to be out on a date, no one was supposed to know that he’d skipped a formal dinner and come home to hide in the dark, no one was supposed to find him stuck, stopped short on his bedroom floor. He doesn’t remember why he got down, he just remembers that there was no getting up. 

It would be a different story if it were one about Lovett picking his drunk ass off the bathroom floor of 1309, not just because that’s a story they all have about each other. It’s not the story about Ronan laughing at Tommy who fell out of Ronan’s bed that one time because it was a twin and Tommy hadn’t been any shorter in those few weird months when they’d been taking each other home. Before Tommy knew how to have anything that wasn’t a fuckbuddy. Before Ronan was in DC more than a couple of weeks at a time. Before anyone was out. Before Lovett met Ronan and Tommy saw what love could look like on both their faces. 

Those are the stories start funny and get funnier over the years, whereas this one is the kind that you carefully make funny over time, cauterizing the wound with distance and a veneer of comedy. Lovett talks about it when Tommy tries to not talk about things. “Hey, Thomas, do you want us to have to prise you open like a little new england clam again? Huh? Is that what you want? To be a sad clam? A sad melodramatic shellfish of pent up emotions having a meltdown in the literal dark? Huh? Huh?” and Tommy can roll his eyes and laugh. 

At the time, that time, Lovett said, “Oh Tommy, hey now, hey, it’s okay, breathe,” and Ronan had helped him drink a glass of water in small, taxing sips and had said, “Sip by sip, Tommy,” and they had sat with him in the dark. In the dark until Lovett had turned on the lamp and on the floor until Ronan had gotten them up.

And Tommy hadn’t been able to do anything until they had done them, and they’d tucked him up and talked to each other in the clear continuation of a conversation from earlier until Tommy had said, “Sounds like a good date.” 

He can still remember in that perfect clarity of memories that have haunted a lot of three ams the way his voice had sounded like he’d been sobbing.

But that means he can also remember the way that Ronan had said, “It was,” and the small noise that Lovett had made in return. “Don’t you even think about apologising, Thomas,” Ronan had added. 

“I don’t know... I... Nothing even happened today,” Tommy had said and Ronan had stroked his hair off his forehead and Lovett had followed Ronan’s hand through Tommy’s hair, the way that he did sometimes, even though Ronan’s familiarity came from sex. It wasn’t confusing then. “It was just one of those fucking days, you know? Where you don’t know what to  _ do  _ with it.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ronan had said, and Lovett had curled his hand around Tommy’s neck, tucked between Tommy and the pillow, because Lovett does know. 

Tommy had closed his eyes and the dark behind them was warm and full. 

And they’d gone back to their discussion of some kind of stats that Tommy had thought at the time was about Lovett’s thesis but knows now was about a video game. 

Looking back over things that happened during the Obama years is a national pastime, and it’s necessary on a personal level, and it’s also an indulgence, Tommy knows this. These days he reads ads about the Theory of Belonging and talks about his Friend of the Pod shirt but the real sweet candy that his brain craves is that kind of kinship in the dark with two people who knew him then and still like him now. 

He wonders if that’s why Ronan has retreated to the farm, a place that exudes belonging from every picture that Tommy has ever looked at. It looks even more idyllic when Tommy comes upon it, turning around the bend in the drive and feeling that feeling which there’s probably an obscure word for when he feels like something is so symbolic it can’t be real. 

Ronan’s face appears in the window in a way that is so Punditlike it makes Tommy laugh, and he’s still laughing when Ronan actually appears in more of a cat stance, weary and mean and completely ready to pounce. He looks exactly as shitty as Tommy had expected but somehow it’s still a miserable shock to see him looking defeated and wrung out, pale and puffy eyed.

“Tommy Vietor, what the hell,” Ronan says, but does allow Tommy to hug him. He feels small and it’s probably Tommy’s fevered imagination but he could swear Ronan’s shoulder bones feel more pronounced. 

Tommy says, without letting go, “Ronan Farrow, what are you doing.” The sun is warm on his back and the birds are chirping. “This place is a movie set, by the way. Also, Jon Lovett wants to know the answer to that question too.” 

“Jonathan probably wanted you to hold out on that longer,” Ronan tells him, or tells his neck. There’s no letting go from any parties. 

Tommy can do this part, he can keep his arms loose and firm around Ronan and he can talk about Lovett, easiest job in the world. “Well then he should have been on the east coast or you should have picked up your phone. Or I guess he should have chosen someone different to come see you, or a different, non investigative reporter boyfriend.” 

“Bullshit,” Ronan says and Tommy laughs again. It’s true. Lovett shouldn’t have done any of those things. Lovett’s choices are Tommy’s favourite choices. “You call him, take the credit.” 

Tommy swings his arm around Ronan’s shoulder in a way that he knows Ronan finds comically bro-y. “You call him, I’ve got plenty of credit. I’m going to make you some good fucking food finally, as the kids say, fuck knows what you’ve been foraging out here. No delis for you to pillage for concerning shrimp combos out in the countryside.”

“Excuse you, there is a 7-Eleven just one town over,” Ronan says sniffily. He fits under Tommy’s arm just like Lovett does. 

Tommy fixes Ronan a sandwich while Ronan says, “I know, I know, I know, I’m sorry,” to whatever very important points Lovett is clearly making at the other end, which is a weird pleasure in its own way, seeing Lovett’s casual power at work. Seeing love in action as apology. 

Tommy also has a twitter DM, of all fucking things, from jonlovett telling him to take Ronan outside, which means that Lovett is not even willing to put his phone down to sent a quick text. 

“Come on, show me the lake,” Tommy says, as Ronan starts to talk back to Lovett about making Tommy drive out all the way which means that he’s feeling better. Ronan being pissy is the best indicator of his comfort. 

“Lovett says that I should find you a boat to make it up to you,” Ronan says, steering Tommy across a perfect lawn to a perfect deck with two very shitty camping chairs set up on it. “Or apparently there are other- hang on.” He puts Lovett on speakerphone just in time to catch the end of Lovett’s lowest sweetest laugh. It’s an attractive laugh, too. 

“Hi Tommy, anyway, look, all I was saying is that there are many ways that Ronan can make it up to you, it’s all up for grabs, even boats. You know?” 

Lovett is talking fast like this is something more than a joke, like it’s something important. 

“I don’t need making up to,” Tommy says and tries to roll his eyes audibly. “Maybe a swim but I don’t need Ronan falling out of a kayak on my conscience.” He pushes the sandwich pointedly at Ronan and keeps pushing until Ronan picks it up. “He looks like the sad basement dwelling hacker in a crime show, I don’t think he has the core strength for wat- for boats.” 

Lovett says Tommy’s name in scandalised delight as Ronan says it with outrage and a lipbite. “Tommy,” Lovett repeats, dragging it out. “You should have just said watersports and pretended not to know what it means. We need to get you off dating apps in West Hollywood, clearly.” 

Ronan laughs his goose laugh. “Jonathan! I was just going to complain that I totally do have the core strength for paddling.”

“Oh, do you really? Tell me more about Tommy’s kinks, he’s gotten all boring and natsec about his sex life,” Lovett lies. Tommy tells him way too much, overshares personal stuff all the time, mostly on accident and always... well. Always. 

Tommy watches Ronan hesitate for a second, barely a second really, one flash of processing that Tommy loves to catch him in. “Asking people’s exes for sexual details is not very nice, Jon Lovett.” He glances at Tommy for a second too, like he only needs that to know if Tommy is alright with this. Calling each other exes isn’t really something they do for, as Lovett might say, a cruise liner of reasons. People get very weird about it, for one, and Lovett’s shittier DC gay friends asked enough times about the ‘crossover period’ that all the fun got sucked out of it from the start. Exes implies relationship in a way that Tommy isn’t sure is his to claim, and it definitively states queer in a way that he and Ronan weren’t broadcasting at the time. It wasn’t like he could say he had an ex called Ronan and not have people know who he meant, and now, now it feels like a closed door on a relationship that isn’t done. 

Tommy lies this time, says, “Well, Lovett isn’t very nice.” Ronan throws a packet of chips at him, and begins to defend Lovett’s honor.

*

After Lovett has to hang up they sit quietly for an hour that drifts by like the cotton candy clouds above. Tommy’s happy to look out on the water and try to read some more of his ebook rather than his tweets. He sends Lovett photos of Ronan, profiled against the trees and water, shining pale and perfect in the sunshine like a classical statue. If they had made statues of people holding sandwiches. 

Eventually Ronan says, “I didn’t... I should have said thank you, even if I was mad at both of you. I am grateful, profoundly grateful. I was... I’m not... I guess I’m not actually okay.” Ronan keeps his eyes on the water so Tommy tries to do the same, like they’re both confessing to the lake.

_ Who is _ , Tommy thinks.  _ Who could be _ . How could Ronan be okay when he’s spent most of this summer reliving the hardest year of his adult life. He says, “I told Jon it could be a quid pro quo if that makes you feel better, but I don’t need it. My quid or my quo? Maybe? Whatever it is, it’s doing what I can to improve your day. With a side of helping Lovett feel less shitty. Plus Dover was starting to get to me. I was probably one day away from telling my mom how she just doesn’t get me.” 

It hadn’t been true when he’d sulkily snapped it at fifteen and it wasn’t true now, the look she’d given him was all too knowing when he’d given her an overview of the situation. He has a feeling she won’t be surprised when he messages her to say that he probably won’t be back until tomorrow.

Ronan half laughs with full effort. “Sure, Tommy. It’s not even that big a deal, I’ve missed way more important things than a few days on the beach with mom and the girls but... You know how sometimes something small becomes emblematic? And then you can’t, I know I’m being quite melodramatic but it feels like I can’t see past all the ways I’m fucking things up.”

“I do know,” Tommy says gently. He proffers the open bag of veggie sticks back to Ronan. “Chip by chip, this time. At least I didn’t find you sitting in the dark alone. Talk about melodramatic.” 

“I think everyone in DC had some long very literal dark nights of the soul, even those who weren’t grieving,” Ronan says. Tommy mentally fills in the joke Lovett would make about the lack of people with actual souls in DC.

He lets himself catch Ronan’s eye and smile. They’re big boys now, they can look at each other sometimes when talking about their emotions. “Hey,” he says, “Ronan. I get it, as much as anyone can get your life. You’re not fucking it up in the big picture stuff and the small stuff, well, that’s where you’ve got us.” He can’t read Ronan’s face but whatever emotions he’s having look positive, at least. “I brought you a couple of books I thought you might like. In return I want to see as many pictures of Lovett being attacked by babies as you have, please.” This is pretty much Lovett’s second family home and Emily has already rinsed Fran for the best of Lovett as an actual baby. Tommy has to take advantage. 

“Is that a polite way of saying you want to go inside now?” Ronan asks. There’s a little colour in his ridiculous porcelain face now and his smile goes a little deeper too. Tommy feels well rewarded already. 

It’s even better when Ronan gives him the tour of the farm and Tommy gets to watch him light up talking about his family, even the aching parts; the losses, the way that the babies have become kids, the animals that “really teach you about death as a kid, you know?”. And he gets to see Jon Lovett, shy and awkward but beaming with pride in every single photograph. Ronan traces a finger over Lovett’s smile in one shot. “I’m so glad he grew his hair out, aren’t you?” 

“I don’t think you’re in a place to talk about hair,” Tommy says, reaching for another Lovett who is happily ensconced in the middle of a hundred Farrows holding a flaming pudding of some kind. Lit up and lit up. Lovett’s hair is better now, but Tommy always wanted to be looking at him, even in DC when they all looked like shit. 

Ronan makes a considering hmm and gives Tommy a once over. “Of the three of us...” 

Tommy remembers in a hot flash the way that Ronan would look at him sometimes in a bar or sometimes in a fucking meeting and he’d say, “Is there something you’d like?” - their code, and they would sneak back to Tommy’s room and god, Ronan’s mouth sucking dick was always more than Tommy could deal with. 

“If you say the words heteronormative blue,” he warns an already snickering Ronan. “I swear to god, the way that the two of you talk you’d think you were, you know, the mean Meryl Streep lady from the bad boyfriend movie, but real. From, I want to say Vogue?” 

This makes Ronan crack up, the only person who Tommy enjoys making laugh a little meanly at Tommy himself. “Firstly, I have to tell Jonathan about this at once, and secondly, yes, Vogue, and thirdly, oh Tommy Vietor, I would never call you hetero or normative, I know you too well for that. Your fashion choices are just a facade for both.” 

Tommy looks back down at the picture of Lovett. “I guess so,” he says. 

*

There’s plenty of food in Mia Farrow’s pantry - Mia! Farrow’s! pantry! Tommy’s brain yells as it has done about nearly everything - even for someone as reliant on the very thorough Blue Apron instructions as Tommy is, so it’s easy to feed Ronan up with noodles and some canned vegetables. He facetimes Lovett to show him Ronan eating. 

“Is this some very niche porn?” Lovett says when he picks up. Tommy can see the impersonal furniture of a dressing room behind him. 

Ronan slurps loudly at some spaghetti in Lovett’s direction. 

“Hot,” Lovett says, and then gets distracted by someone off screen. Tommy leaves his cell propped up again some kind of rustic flatware that seems to pop up on every surface in the farm so that Lovett can just check in again when he wants to. Tommy has plenty to say to Ronan about their mutual diplomat friends who definitely haven’t been using Signal to express some views on the cornucopia of international crimes occurring in the world, and Lovett, as they keep telling him, doesn’t technically have clearance for these compare and contrast sessions. 

Just before Lovett has to go he demands to face Tommy again. “Don’t drive home tonight,” Lovett says, and Tommy doesn’t think he needs to say yes out loud, but he does. Lovett’s smile is glorious. “Thank you, Tommy. I know you don’t want to be owed anything but I think you’ve done a pretty good job boyfriending my boyfriend so far. So how about you take what you want, it’s okay.” 

Tommy can feel himself going red, and there’s no point hoping that it won’t show up on screen.

Lovett grins and makes a series of suggestive eyebrows before ending the call so abruptly that Tommy is left staring slack jawed at his own screen.

“Boyfriend his boyfriend?” Ronan asks in that way he asks the first question in a series building to The Question, the one you didn’t know you needed to answer. 

Tommy should be less surprised that Lovett would drop that one and run. “It’s what Jon said when he asked me to drive over. Care and feeding and taking photos of your good side, I guess.”

“And you do have some relevant experience,” Ronan says, and then, too light. “I can not call you my ex, if you don’t want me to. I know it isn’t something you want bandied about.” Sometimes Tommy forgets that Ronan was a hothoused genius with no kid friends and sometimes he really does not. Bandied about. Jesus. 

Tommy says, “No, I don’t mind you bandying... I just... I didn’t really feel like I could lay claim to that word.” Lovett is the person Ronan was in a relationship with in DC. Tommy was just a person in Ronan’s sexual history.

“Oh,” Ronan says. It’s sad. Tommy stares at him. “No, no, it’s just... I think of you as my ex, I do. If you wanted to do the same.” 

  
“I guess don’t feel like I’ve earned that right,” Tommy tries to explain. “Like. An ex suggests something more than what we had. Not to shit on what we had but we were both -”

“Fucked up?” Ronan offers. He looks like he knows exactly how much of an understatement that is. 

It had been good, the two of them, but neither of them had the bandwidth to work on a relationship. They barely made it to fuckbuddy status. God, Tommy hadn’t even been out to anyone except Favs and so lost in loss he couldn’t open another internal box and having meetings about real doomsday scenarios. Ronan was in literal warzones and trying to make people take him seriously so that he could stop more wars. Tommy wasn’t sleeping. Ronan wasn’t sleeping. 

“Fucked up,” Tommy agrees. “Maybe if...” There’s no real way to finish that sentence. They were those people, and they are these people now, who can talk about the idiots that they were. Ronan and Lovett are who they are because of each other and Tommy can’t even think about changing either of them. He doesn’t think they would want to either. He hopes not. He doesn’t think _ that could have been me _ about the pictures on these walls of Lovett, because it couldn’t. If he wants to think selflishly it comes out the same, because having tried something with Ronan could have meant ending up with nothing of Lovett in his life, and he knows that it would be... unbearable. He would be unbearable as a person, probably a soulless spin doctor who wouldn’t consider owning a doodle and had relegated his queerness to a phase. “No.”

Ronan just says, “Exactly. I hear you’re trying to be kinder to yourself, and god knows I’m always trying to get Jon to be, so let’s include all of our past selves in that too. In all of our fucked up glory.” 

“They got us here,” Tommy says, holding up his glass of wine. “Here’s to us.” Ronan hums a tune that Tommy doesn’t know as he mirrors the gesture but he knows Ronan’s smile, it’s the sweetest one.

*

The farm feels like the way Lovett talks about it, like a safe haven, like every dream of domesticity and family and wholesomeness. Tommy’s bed has three patchwork quilts to bury himself under and weigh him to sleep with warmth and stability. And yet, he still wakes up at 5am thinking about Lovett. About how there must have been a time when Ronan could still remember exactly how Tommy touched him while being touched by Lovett. Ronan seems like the type to compare - not cruelly, just analytically. Lovett is for sure the type to ask about what Tommy had been like. Tommy is the only one lacking data. He has more general Lovett data, obviously, so much of it that it spills into every corner of his life but he doesn’t know for sure what that swell of bicep would be like to clutch, how much it would take to make Lovett’s smart mouth go panting and desperate, what Tommy would do sexually for the gleam of challenge in Lovett’s eyes, or the sweet begging note of his voice when he wants something very bad. 

He rolls over to get his phone to distract himself before he starts jerking off in Mia Farrow’s guest bedroom about her ostensible son in law, and is very distracted at once by a message from one Jon Lovett. He gets up and stumbles to Ronan’s room, saying, “It’s fine, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s just that Lovett, here, read this, he’s fine,” until he can get close enough to hold his phone up for Ronan to read the message. 

Ronan scrabbles for his glasses and Tommy says, “Fuck, I’m sorry. It’s from Jon and he’s on a redeye? Right now? I mean, he is, that’s not a question, sorry, I’m adjusting. Sorry. Coffee?” 

There is a long beat as Ronan stares at him, and then he bursts out laughing. He says, “Do you even need coffee or are you wired on Lovett? That is a question, even though I’m also adjusting, by the way.”

  
“Yes,” Tommy says fervently. “I do. The only question is should I make you some.” 

Ronan turns over in the bed. “No it isn’t. Sit here, tell me flight times and then go the fuck back to sleep. If I can do it so can you.” 

Tommy has not found that to be a compelling argument in the past, insomnia is not logical nor is it sentimental, but he does want Ronan to get more sleep, so he goes back to his bed, He doesn’t sleep but his mind turns more restfully for the next few hours which is frankly almost better. 

*

Lovett calls from a car service who he has, as far as Tommy can tell, part bribed and part browbeaten into driving him to the farm from the city. 

“I offered Ronan coffee and he turned me down but I’m thinking you probably won’t,” Tommy says and laughs at the desperate noise Lovett makes just at the word. He tells Ronan that Lovett is on his way and Ronan mumbles something about turning up late with Starbucks and goes back to sleep again. “Your boyfriend is very weird and ungainly in his sleep,” Tommy tells Lovett.

“I know, it’s the sweetest thing,” Lovett says, which is not what Tommy said but Tommy isn’t going to argue. 

*

Tommy’s nervous energy switches from productive to edging to paralytic and he eventually decides to try and swim it out. The water always makes him feel better, like his brain is remembering what it was like in simpler times in the primordial soup. Ronan is still asleep, there’s coffee ready for Lovett. He’s done all he can. 

The pond has the perfect edge of a chill to distract him, and to let him swim and swim and swim until he comes up for air and there’s Jon Lovett, standing on the jetty cradling a mug. Tommy swims over and rests his arms on the edge of the deck next to Lovett’s feet. 

Lovett says, “Ugh,” and pokes Tommy’s shoulder with his pink sneaker. “Is this really necessary?”

  
“Do you want to come in or do you want to stand up there and insult my body for no reason?”

“I think we all know the answer to that,” Lovett says, still glowering at Tommy’s arms like they’re actively offending him. It’s Lovett’s default compliment. “What I want is to go indoors to my crazy non ex boyfriend.” He turns back to look at Tommy. “Are you coming?” he demands.

“Don’t you want to say hi to your boyfriend without  _ his  _ ex there?” Tommy says, trying it out. 

Lovett gives him a look like a put down. “I literally told you to take what you want, you don’t have to call him your ex if you don’t want to,” Lovett says. 

Tommy swallows hard. “I didn’t... we didn’t... Nothing happened.” It couldn’t, not without Lovett, clear as lakewater he knows this. 

Lovett’s face softens. “I know that. I’m saying, wait, what was it you used to say to each other that you thought no one else knew was a code for ‘let’s fuck’. See something you like?”

Tommy looks up at him, his Jon, Ronan’s Jon. He looks good, just like he always has. Tommy has not one time wondered why Ronan fell hard and fast and forever. “Yes,” he says. “Fuck yes.” 

Lovett goes pink and ducks his head. “I mean, me too. Obviously. Like I said, ugh. But also, I said come here and you did and now I’m saying come inside with me and we can both boyfriend. No exes. Just us.”

Tommy swallows again and then nods. “I can take that offer,” he says. 

Lovett gestures upwards with his cup, but Tommy can still see the curve of his grin. “Come on, Vietor, out of the lake, Mr Darcy me. Time’s awasting, Ronan’s awaiting.” 

Inside isn’t Tommy’s house, but it feels like getting back to somewhere well loved. Like Lovett is home, so they’re all home now. Tommy follows.

  
  
  



End file.
